The Benevolent Asylum, Ballarat

POOR RELIEF IN AUSTRALIA.

In providing for our poor, we in Australia have the advantage of being without tradition. We have no venerable schemes to abandon, no rare old abuses to get rid of. Beadledom is unknown. We therefore start fair. But in this land of gold and plenty, where we buy a leg of mutton or a dozen of peaches for a shilling, can there be poverty? Well, yes. The poor are still in our land. Doubtless all classes of labourers are much better off than at home; we always call England home. But there is poverty, and that, too, to some considerable extent. In the unsettled state of our population, men change continually their places of abode. So it happens that careless husbands leave their wives and families without means of support. Again, in our mining districts accidents are of far too frequent occurrence. In many different ways the bread-winner is suddenly cut down. Moreover, even in this splendid climate men and women do grow old, and, from some cause or other, have made no provision for declining years. They, too, must be supported. Lastly, there is drunkenness, which here, as everywhere, adds not a few to the list of those who receive charitable aid. In the great metropolitan goldfield, Ballarat and surrounding district, out of a population of a little over sixty thousand, some seven hundred per week receive aid from a public institution.

What that public institution is, and how it does its work, we propose now to tell.

Poorhouse or workhouse are still names unknown in Australia. Our institution is called The Benevolent Asylum, and every true Australian prays that the time may never come when our children shall forget the sacred claims of charity, and put their trust in poor laws and workhouses.

Before relief can be given, the wherewithal must of necessity first be got. We have no poor rates. How, then, is money obtained? Last year the public gave us in subscriptions two thousand one hundred and eighty-two pounds, and the government supplemented it by a grant of four thousand pounds, so that we have an income of six thousand one hundred and eighty two pounds, besides payment from government for deserted children and other items, making altogether about eight thousand pounds. Money being provided, the next question is, who is to spend it? Every year a president, treasurer, and committee of sixteen gentlemen, ares elected by and out of the subscribers of one pound a year or upward. This is the staff of managers, and the whole power is placed in their hands. They are unpaid, and conduct the rather laborious business of the institution as a work of love. Our building stands in a reserve of about six acres; it is built in the Elizabethan style, and has cost about sixteen thousand pounds. There is accommodation for nearly three hundred inmates.

Let us go over it. We enter a spacious waiting-hall. To the left are apartments for women and children, master and matron's rooms, kitchen, laundry, &c. The centre and. right are appropriated to men, including a large sick ward. The first room we enter in the centre, is the men's dining-room: scrupulously clean, light, and pleasant. Used also for religions service. Down a passage we find the men's sitting-rooms; the older men in one; the younger in the other. That tall old man fought at Waterloo, and there, too, is one of Nelson's heroes. There are Scotchmen playing draughts, and there is a Frenchman playing a fiddle. On the table are the daily papers, several English papers, magazines, &c. A Chinaman and a New Zealander are admiring the last number of the Illustrated London News. Some are reading novels, some are discussing politics, some are simply enjoying light, air, cleanliness, and human companionship.

Sleeping wards are up-stairs. Each inmate has an iron bedstead, mattrass, blankets, and white counterpane. At the head of each bed is a neat wooden chest, serving as a seat and a receptacle for clothes, and other private property of the residents. Over some of the beds you may see photographs of loved but lost or far-distant friends. The master can be, and very frequently is, communicated with at all hours of the night. Go into the grounds; there we have, first, a flower-garden radiant in this autumn month of March with fuchsias, pelargoniums, geraniums, roses, dahlias, gladioli, liliums, petunias, &c. On each side are vegetable gardens with all ordinary English vegetables, magnificent vegetable marrows, cucumbers, tomatoes, &c. It is very seldom that the first prize for vegetables at the Horticultural Society's shows is not taken by the gardener to the Benevolent Asylum. His prize vegetables are consumed in soup, and are in various other ways disposed of by the inmates. Here may be seen sundry old men and others who can do a little work, earning extras in the shape of plugs of tobacco and pats of butter, by digging, weeding, or generally making themselves useful. In the centre of the vegetable garden one cannot fail to see a good-sized arbour covered with Banksia and other roses. This — oh, Mr. Bounderby, is not this turtle soup? — is the smoking-room. Old men, who have smoked all their lives, must smoke; hence, all over fifty are allowed a plug of tobacco weekly; and other tobacco may be earned, as we have seen, by garden labour, shoe-mending, tailoring, or mattrass-stuffing. We have no square, high-walled, gravelled yards; we believe that even the poor may have aesthetic tastes, and if they have not, we do not see how virtue can be helped, or vice hindered, by positive bare God-hated ugliness. We fancy — mistaken in our youth, it may be — that that "contentment" which an old book tells us with "godliness is gain," is best promoted by the sight of God's fair works, and that those perhaps who have never thought of Him may begin to see him in a garden—in brick walls and spiked tops never. Besides, for those who want facts, our beautiful garden pays, and pays well. Last year our vegetables, taken at market prices, were worth one hundred and forty-nine pounds nineteen shillings and threepence, besides what fed cows and pigs, which useful animals cleared two hundred and fourteen pounds two shillings. Cross the gardens, and you find our schoolroom and playgrounds. Our school is under the Board of Education. In Victoria we have a system of government secular education, of a first-class ordinary English character. Look at our children: plump, rosy, and decidedly jolly. At home they would be thought well-dressed children of the better sort of mechanics. They have swings, gymnasium, cricket, tops, and other such follies. As you walk through with the master, you see that the children are not afraid of him—that they bring their grievances to him with an unlimited belief both in his power and intention to see the right thing done.

Next let us pass into the quadrangle at the back. Here are the kitchen, laundry, dryingroom, bath. The inmates' clothes are duly washed every week in winter, and dried by hot air;insummer withthethermometer from ninety to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, they dry fast enough. On Saturday,shirts, socks, and the like, neatly folded,are placed in the chests before mentioned in the sleeping wards. In the bath-room there is a fine plunge; the men have the use of it twice a week; the boys, any day; and a fine sight it is to see the youngsters taking headers and swimming gloriously. Workshops for those who can do a little mattrass-making, shoemaking, or tailoring; cowhouses, pigsties, and earth-closets; complete our survey.

Returning to the house through the kitchen, we may inquire as to food. For breakfast, coffee and bread; those who have earned it, have butter. Dinner, either basin of soup and six ounces of boiled meat free from bone; or half a pound of roast meat, with vegetables when in season, one pound of bread, and potatoes at discretion. We find it better to put the potatoes and bread on the table, indeed actually cheaper, than to portion it out, for there is not so much waste; those who only eat little, only take little, and no one can say they have not enough. The meat is cut up into equal portions in the kitchen for convenience' sake. Tea as breakfast: sound tea, and not coffee. The bread is all the best wheaten, the meat first quality; which is, after all, not saying much, when our present contract is for prime beef twopence, mutton one penny three farthings per pound. Two members of committee, appointed in rotation and for a fortnight at a time, visit the asylum, inspect the stores, hear complaints if any, and see that all is as it ought to be. The master and matron have three hundred pounds per annum, with board, lighting, fire, and quarters. The work of the house is done by paid servants. We do not forget the religious and moral welfare of our poor. Free in this land from a state church, and where there is perfect religious equality, we could not appoint any chaplain, but the voluntary principle works well. Good friends of various denominations hold a Sunday school every Sunday afternoon. The inmates go to what place of worship they please, on Sunday morning; in the afternoon there is a service conducted by the Wesleyans; on Friday afternoon the Episcopalians have service; on Tuesday afternoon the ministers of most of the other denominations conduct servicein turn. Attendance is optional. By way of amusement, occasional lectures; or should dissolving views, or Lancashire bell-ringers, or such like, visit the town, very frequently they come up and give an entertainment to their poor brethren.

But the sick ward must not be forgotten. Here every attention is paid to our paupers. We get those who are turned out of the hospital as incurable, besides those who fall sick in the house. Take up the doctor's book, and, for the benefit of some English poor-house, copy:

A. T., beef-tea, wine, and soft fruit daily.

S. M., ice (a luxury in Australia), eggs, and wine.

S. H., soft fruit, sago, porter.

Our doctor seems a great advocate for soft fruit, by which term, at this present, peaches, grapes, pears, apples are meant. Eighteen eggs and a bottle of wine, with sago and arrowroot, is a favourite out-door prescription. Horrid mixtures in blacking-bottles are unknown.

Who are admitted to our asylum? All who really need such a home; neither creed nor clime makes any difference. Any man or woman who can't get a living, and whose friends can't or won't support, we admit. Our object is stated to be: "To relieve the aged, infirm, disabled, and destitute, and to minister to their necessities according to the ability of the institution." The limits are simply want, on the part of the applicant; means, on the part of the asylum. Either the general or the house committee meet weekly to receive and deal with applications.

We have said nothing yet of out-door relief. Many require help who cannot be admitted into the asylum — families and so forth — and these constitute the out-door part of our work. Every Wednesday, the master serves out rations to such applicants according to the following scale for each adult: six pounds of bread or five pounds of flour, four pounds of meat or two and a half pounds of rice, a quarter of a pound of tea, a quarter of a pound of coffee, three-quarters of a pound of sugar; for each child bread and sugar only. Any of these things can be changed for oatmeal, arrowroot, sago, and so forth, if required. Extra rations for sickness according to doctor's orders.

The town is divided into districts; to each district two members of committee are appointed, who have to visit the recipients of relief in their district, and report on the cases to the general committee at least once a month. Special orders in cases of necessity can at any time be given by members of committee to poor in their own districts. Such orders are available for two weeks, after which applicants must appear, or their cases must be reported on to the committee by the person granting the order. The president can at any time grant relief, or admit in urgent cases. We thus try to avoid all unnecessary routine while guarding against imposition, and the self-respecting poor have not to be badgered by heartless officials, but state their case to gentlemen who know how to respect poverty.

Thus it is that we treat our poor in Victoria; the Ballarat Asylum is a sample of many others. We have not yet learnt that poverty is a crime. There is no doubt we are sometimes imposed on; but it is far better that some rogues should be kept by our generosity, than that our fellows, Christian or not Christian, should bear unmerited suffering which it is in our power to alleviate.